The Season of Open Water by Dawn Tripp Page A

reason enough to take this work, he tells himself. It is only one job. To refit a boat. To strip out her insides and rebuild her lighter, faster, more silent. And if the work had been offered by anyone else, he would have snapped it up, no hesitation, no questions asked.
    He looks up again at Bridge. She has stripped off the dead bottom boards and stacked them in a heap on the floor. She is setting down new ones, the heart side of the wood facing out, and he notices then that, as she works, there is a thin forked line between her brows. It is slight but so unlike her, a small frown, it puzzles him, and he watches her more closely.
    She can feel his eyes on her. She bites her lip. She isn’t working well, he must notice it, he must have begun to wonder why. Her hands are clumsy, and she is annoyed with herself. It is simple work she is doing, but now again, for the fourth time already, she pinches her finger setting one board against another. She swears under her breath, shakes her hand loose. It is only a nip, the pain sharp, no blood, no broken skin, but everything feels upside down, her head upside down. The planks don’t seem to line up. She is thinking about the morning, it is all the fault of the morning, and that man, Henry Vonniker, seeing him last night at Asa’s, then seeing him again at the store, stealing the oysters and having him catch her do it, and the way he had looked at her, astonishment and frank desire, she had seen it, felt it. It had made her feel alive.
    Why should that happen? What should it matter? Why was she even asking herself when she knew very well it couldn’t mean anything? And thinking about it now makes her restless, impatient, a little bit angry that the thought of it, the thought of him, is taking up room in her head. When she works, she likes her head clear, like calm water, so she can see through to the bottom of things. That is what she wants. That is the way she likes it, and the only thing now that she feels a little bit grateful for is that Luce was gone by the time she got home so she didn’t have to banter with him, because she wasn’t in the mood. He might have sensed something was off, and if he had, he would have bugged after her about it, because that was just the way he was. Luce couldn’t let things go.
    She takes a breath in, but doesn’t look up. She still feels her grandfather watching her. She keeps lining up the planks, setting the nails, slamming them in with the hammer. It is a sound she loves— that clear, square hit of a hammer on the head of a nail that drives it clean through the plank into the frame. And usually it is a motion she can do without thinking. Her grandfather is not saying anything. She can hear the sound of his teeth grinding on the stem of his pipe, but he is not working, he is sitting still, very still, his eyes on her. Finally she puts down the hammer and straightens up, one hand on her hip. She looks at him and says, “So you’re not going to be much use today, are you?”
    He bursts out laughing. She blushes and smiles. He looks at her carefully. “I’m just watching over you.”
    â€œYou don’t need to do that.”
    â€œJust want to make sure you don’t get sloppy.”
    â€œWhy should I get sloppy?”
    â€œYou’ll have to tell me.”
    She looks down at her hands and notices a thread on the cuff of her sleeve coming loose. She gives it a tug, and it quickly unravels. She breaks it off with her teeth.
    â€œI don’t really think it’s me,” she says slowly, her voice controlled. “After all, I’m not the one sitting around, idle hands, thinking about the men who came by this morning and what they might have offered me.”
    He doesn’t answer right away. She watches his face. But there is no change in his expression, no twitch, no shift, nothing in his eyes, nothing she can see. He is good at hiding things. She knows this. He shifts his